


Galentine's Day Fic Collection

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 14:30:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4439021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These were written for Galentine's Day 2012, so are only canon-compliant up to "Citizen Knope" or thereabouts. A collection of non-related fics, from drabble length up to about 3.5k, mostly from prompts. Thanks to everyone who played along at the time, and most especially the esteemed craponaspatula for her help with Chapter 12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cake

Ben had never baked a cake from scratch before, but…it was Leslie’s birthday, after all. And he had plenty of time on his hands. He also had flour, sugar, and cocoa powder on his hands, as well as on his t-shirt and jeans and quite possibly in his hair.

Somehow his grandma had always made this look so easy. 

But then, this was why he’d started as soon as Leslie had gone to work that morning and he’d cleaned up after her birthday waffles (with extra whipped cream and sprinkles). In case baking a cake took all day, and several attempts. Which, judging by how long it had taken him to get the first two layers ready to go in the oven, it very well might. 

He’d just closed the oven door on attempt #1 when there was a huge _bang_ on the sliding door. Startled, Ben banged his head on one of the cabinets. Was that stupid bird back again? No, the bird wasn’t that big. The bird didn’t have blonde hair or a “Knope 2012” campaign button, either. 

“Beeeeeennnnn!” he heard, along with a lot of frantic pounding. 

Opening the sliding door was hard, since he was still wearing an oven mitt. 

“Hi!” Leslie screeched. She flung her arms around his neck and then spun him around in a couple of circles, skipping.

“Is everything okay?” She was oddly sweaty, considering that it was the middle of January and she wasn’t wearing a coat. 

“It’s my _birthday_.” She grinned, her eyes wild and glassy, and kissed him. “And you taste like chocolate.”

“I know it’s your birthday. It’s also 11:45 in the morning. Why aren’t you at work?”

“I was at work!” She bounced into the kitchen. “Something smells really good.” Her eyes widened. “Are you baking me a cake? You’re baking me a cake.” 

Ben followed her into the kitchen and took off the oven mitt, finally. “Yes, I’m—” 

“Ron brought me a cake this morning.” She grabbed him around the waist and drove forwards, pinning him against the fridge. “It was just from Food N’Stuff, so all they wrote on it was _Birthday_ , but it was really good! Because Ron got it with double the usual amount of frosting. And then I had my special birthday coffee with Ann and she let me get extra chocolate syrup since it’s my birthday and then _Tom_ , Tom brought me all these giant cookies with my face on them, and—and I’m having a hard time concentrating on work for some reason so I thought I would come see you.”

She was still hopping up and down. “I think,” Ben said, slowly, “you might have had a little too much sugar this morning.” 

“Well, that’s not even possible,” she said. She patted his hair. A tiny cloud of flour went _poof_. “I’m just feeling really…energetic.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“So I thought I would come see you,” she repeated, “because I thought you might know how to help me get rid of some of this _energy_.” She grinned again.

He knew how.

The first attempt at baking a cake from scratch burned. But, as even Leslie acknowledged an hour later, when they’d opened all the windows in the house and Ben had finally convinced her to eat some leftover chicken, she’d probably had enough sugar already. 

He meant to make a second attempt after she’d gone back to the office, but the cake pans were ruined. So he made a second round of birthday waffles instead, and wrote “Happy birthday Leslie” in whipped cream and strawberries.

“Best birthday cake ever,” she said, beaming at him. “And you have whipped cream in your hair.” She helped him get it out.


	2. Campaign Trail Muggle Quidditch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "Harry Potter" but also "Andy and Bobby Newport interacting."

“Babe, are you ready for this? You’re ready, right?”

“Yeah, Andy, I’m ready.” April had stolen her dad’s new digital camera and her sister for the game, although she wasn’t sure how many pictures she Natalie wanted to take. They all kind of looked like idiots.

Andy smashed his plastic bat against his palm a couple of times. “Good, ‘cause I’m gonna _kill_ someone with—” The bat bounced off his hand and smacked him in the forehead. “I’m okay!” he yelled, just as Leslie stepped up to the podium.

“Welcome,” she called, “to the Parks Department’s first-ever all-ages Muggle Quidditch tournament.”

The small crowd cheered as Leslie introduced the team captains, and April tried not to roll her eyes. _That_ had been the dumbest department meeting ever. First, Leslie had made them watch an edited compilation of all the Quidditch games from all the Harry Potter movies. Andy had gotten so excited about flying broomsticks that he’d fallen off his chair. His face fell when Leslie had explained that flying broomsticks weren’t real, and then he’d muttered “I knew that” in a tiny voice that made April want to throw jelly donuts at him until he got happy again. 

Then they’d had an hour-long argument about who had to be captain of which team. Apparently Andy was like the world’s best Hufflepuff, according to Leslie, and it wasn’t like April wasn’t going to be on a team with him, so they were Hufflepuffs even if she was pretty sure Slytherin was more her speed. The Hufflepuff shirt wasn’t so bad, though. It matched most of her cardigans.

Anyway it was a dumb meeting and the Quidditch game was going to be kind of dumb too, because who wanted to run around a field with brooms between their legs, looking for Jean-Ralphio, who was dressed up as a stupid gold ball with little fairy wings? 

Andy did. Especially after Leslie explained about Beaters. Secretly, April thought being a Beater sounded kind of great too. So they had these bats, and then a bunch of little kids running around in yellow sweatshirts. Whatever. She’d spent Saturdays doing more boring stuff, probably.

And then Bobby Newport’s office had called in the middle of their meeting, interrupting Leslie’s impassioned plea for Donna to please, please captain the Ravenclaws. They’d put Bobby in speakerphone in the conference room and god, that was pathetic: _Give me a team. I want one. I want a Quidditch team. I’m sorry, please. Please give me a Quidditch team_. What a loser.

So Leslie had said fine, Bobby could be captain of Slytherin. He’d clapped gleefully and hung up and Leslie had rolled her eyes and said “Didn’t even realize that was an insult.” 

April hated Bobby Newport. She sort of wanted to smash the stupid Bludger ball right into Bobby Newport’s face, and make it look like an accident. 

Leslie finished her introductions, then bustled over to the Hufflepuff side. “Okay, guys, good luck! I’m not allowed to root for you, but if you don’t win, I’m going to be really disappointed, okay?”

“Okay, boss,” said Andy, saluting her.

“No saluting. I’m Gryffindor captain, remember? If we both win our games we’re facing off in the final this afternoon. But you have to win this game. You have to.” 

“We’re not gonna let Bobby win,” April said.

Leslie hugged her (gross), then caught sight of something hovering over April’s shoulder, threw her arms down to the sides, and made a face. “April, what is Orin doing here?”

“Helping.” 

“You know I don’t think he should be in public. Especially not around children.”

April shrugged. “You said you wanted a Harry Potter atmosphere.”

“Yeah, well, I meant for you to bring a wand, not—not that weirdo.” 

Orin said nothing, as usual. He just…hovered, with his black hooded cape pulled all the way up.

“He is atmosphere,” April insisted. “He’s a dementor.” 

Leslie stepped back and contemplated Orin for a moment. “Huh. Okay, you’re right. Good work, April! Orin, you can stay. But don’t suck anyone’s soul out. Okay, are we ready? Ron, you ready?”

Ron nodded. 

“Then let the match begin!” She waved her arm, Ron blew his referee’s whistle, and Tom switched on the microphone. 

April didn’t pay attention to a word Tom was saying. Just raised her hand and signaled. Her team knew what to do.

Hufflepuff was up by 80 points before Slytherin even knew what had hit them. At which point Bobby Newport threw his broom on the ground and stomped off, sobbing. 

Muggle Quidditch wasn’t so dumb.


	3. A Three-Hour Tour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Leslie's dream about a playboy otter lost at sea

Ben woke up as he often did, with Leslie muttering something into some part of his body. Usually she made campaign speeches into his ear, but tonight’s speech was going into his armpit, and it was awfully…rhythmic. 

“Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip,” she murmured, “that started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship.”

He opened his eyes, and blinked. Was she singing?

“The mate was a mighty sailing man, the skipper covered in fur. Five _lutrinae_ set sail that day for a three hour tour, a three hour tour.”

This was kind of adorable, but if he didn’t wake her up, he was going to have that damn song stuck in his head for all eternity. 

He hated to wake her up, though. She slept so little as it was… 

Wait, did she sing that the skipper was covered in fur? And what on earth were lutrinae? 

“The weather started getting rough, the tiny yacht was tossed…” 

Okay, Gilligan definitely had a ship, not a yacht. 

“If not for the courage of the fearless crew Yachter Otter would be lost, Yachter Otter would be lost.”

Good lord. She was dreaming, _and singing_ , about an otter.

This was the cutest thing Leslie had ever done. And she’d just spent the evening posing her plush Li’l Sebastian in her miniature city council chambers and making speeches in a horse voice, voting “neigh” to all the propositions. 

“The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle with Yachter Otter, Li’l Sebastian too, the millionaire and his wife, the beautiful nurse, the professor and Perd Hapley, here on Yachter Otter’s isle.” 

The bedsprings creaked as Leslie pushed herself onto her back. She was really starting to belt it out, now. Ben wondered who the millionaire, his wife, and the professor were, and how Ann would feel about being stranded on a desert isle with them, Perd Hapley, a dead small horse, and an otter. 

"So this is the tale of the castaways, cracking crabs upon their chests...they’ll swim and be adorable and all wear sweater vests.”

The theme song wasn’t making a whole lot of sense anymore, but Leslie’s ability to rhyme in her sleep was certainly impressive. 

“Yachter Otter wears a monocle and parties like a champ, and since he’s always swimming, his fur is always damp,” she sang. One arm waved in the air, like she was conducting an orchestra. 

Ben was having a hard time not laughing, now. 

“No phone, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury, it cuts down on the otter’s fun ‘cause he can’t get girls at sea.”

Suddenly, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. He squeezed back. 

“So join us here each week and watch—” He would, he definitely would—“you're sure to get a smile, from the playboy otter and his friends, here on Yachter Otter’s isle.”

He couldn’t resist nuzzling in for a kiss. She was too damn cute. 

“Ben, go to sleep,” she muttered, without opening her eyes. “They’re gonna make new swing sets out of bamboo.” 

He went back to sleep. He was still asleep a few hours later, when she flipped on the lights. 

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said, with her usual morning grin, and she handed him a cup of coffee before he could even sit up all the way. Then she sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed and ruffled his hair. 

“Morning.” 

“I had the weirdest dream last night.” 

The theme song was back in his head already, but he smiled anyway. “Tell me about it.”


	4. Lisa Frank Candidate Barbie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: An ill-conceived campaign event at the Bulge.

Donna hoisted the large cardboard box onto the bar, brushed her hands clean, and stepped aside. Her campaign work was done for now…until these fools got wasted and she had to cart them all home in her Benz. It was already humming inside the Bulge: disco lights flashing, Lady Gaga blaring, and Leslie making the rounds while that skinny little rubber band tried to disappear into a corner.

A tiny sharp suit flew into her peripheral vision. “Are these my buttons?”

“These are _Leslie’s_ buttons.”

“Sweet. Donna, you got slicey-slicers?” 

Eyebrows, flared nostrils, silence.

“Fine,” Tom sighed. “Do you have scissors?” 

“I do not.” 

“Ron!” bellowed Tom, and Ron appeared, pulled a jackknife from his pocket, and sliced open the packing tape. 

Five hundred buttons twinkled up at them. Leslie’s face, two penguins holding flippers, and the words “Knope 2012,” printed in a rainbow color scheme and enough glitter that all Donna could think about were those Saturday morning cartoons from the 1980s. 

“So much better than the red and blue,” groaned Tom. “Right, Ron?”

Ron winced and muttered something about “girl colors,” but he put a button on anyway. Donna and Tom pinned buttons on too, as did the bartenders. 

Traeger bounced over to them—“Donna Meagle!”—and Donna wondered, not for the first time, if tapping that would be worth dealing with all the crazy. “Leslie Knope!” he called. “These are literally the most delightful buttons with your name and face on them that I have ever seen.” He pinned on three, then started doing the most _ludicrous_ dance that Donna had ever seen. 

Yeah, forget that nonsense. 

Donna lifted an eyebrow at Ben, who seemed to take it as some sort of summons, and nervously picked his way across the floor. 

“What’s up, Donna?” he said, in someone else’s voice. 

“You uncomfortable in a gay bar, Wyatt?”

“No. I’m uncomfortable because we’re here on some sort of fetish night and there are twelve guys dressed as cops right over there.”

Sometimes it was better to ignore men. She shrugged that one off, reached in the box, and handed him a button.

“Good lord. _This_ was Tom’s brilliant win-over-the-gay-vote idea?” But he pinned it to his sad, sad little windbreaker anyway. “It’s cute, I guess.” 

Leslie noticed the box, finally, and hurried over. “Are these the buttons? I want to see!” Ben pointed at his chest, and her face scrunched up. “Seriously? I look like…like Lisa Frank Candidate Barbie.” 

“But it’s perfect for this crowd!” crowed Tom, appearing out of nowhere with that peacock-headed fool beside him. 

“Tom, ‘gay’ isn’t synonymous with ‘tacky’—” She grabbed Tom by the collar and dragged him away. The occasional angry phrase floated back over the music—“real issues” and “serious position on gay marriage” and “equal rights.” Donna casually tossed her hair back and sidled away from the bar. She couldn’t have alcohol tonight, but she _could_ get intoxicated on a good fight. 

That fool stepped in front of her. “Donna. Baby. Grind on me.” 

“No.”

“D to the O to the N-N-A—”

“I _said_ no.” 

Donna tilted her head at April, who nodded back, tugged on the sleeve of Andy’s FBI jacket, and whispered something in his ear. Andy’s eyes widened, and seconds later, he’d tackled Jean-Ralphio from behind. 

“Burt Macklin, FBI!” he shouted. “Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to stop harassing this fine woman—oh, sorry, Jean-Ralphio. I didn’t know it was you.” 

Jean-Ralphio picked himself up off the floor. “It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said, dusting off his suit jacket. “Listen. You seem like a good dude, so I’m gonna tell it to you straight.” His stupid little eyes flicked back and forth, and his voice went up in pitch. “Look, I came to this thing to support Leslie, ‘cause she’s super fly and all, but—but what is going _on?_ This bar is dope, but it…where are all the ladies?” He sang the last word in a terrible falsetto.

April suddenly fixed her gaze on Jean-Ralphio’s pocket. Her hand darted forward. “Oh, my god,” she said. “Donna, look at this.” She spread out two dozen crumpled cocktail napkins on the bar. 

Donna felt her face light up. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Ooh, lemme see,” said Andy, pushing his way in between them. He pointed at the napkins, and gasped. “It’s a secret spy code of some sort! I just need to crack it. If I do some basic equations and then re-route the data through this crypto-quest…” He pulled out his cell phone and started mashing the buttons. 

“They’re not a code, they’re _telephone numbers_ ,” said April. She spun on her heel and poked a finger into Jean-Ralphio’s scrawny little chest. “Everyone’s hitting on you.” 

Jean-Ralphio gulped, and a tiny _squeak_ emitted from his throat. “The ones dressed as cops are really intimidating,” he whispered. “Help me.”


	5. Happy Birthday, Mr. President

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Leslie and Ben celebrate President's Day

She woke Ben up by kissing him, which was her favorite way to wake him up. She didn’t think he minded being woken up that way, either. This morning, though, after the requisite sixty seconds of making out it took for his brain to snap into gear, he sat up and looked wildly around the bedroom instead of trying to pull her down into the sheets with him, which was what he usually did. 

“How’d you get in here?” he asked, with a hint of panic.

Okay, maybe waking him up by kissing him made a little more sense when they’d spent the night together. Still, it wasn’t like she’d crawled in his window or anything. Although that sounded kind of fun. Maybe she should try it sometime. How hard would it be to pry out the screen?

“I knocked on your front door and it fell open. Did you know most of Mouse Rat is passed out in your living room?”

He groaned. 

“Anyway, get up! It’s late. We have a lot to do today.”

“What time is it?” 

“Almost nine.” 

“And what do we have to do? It’s a _holiday_.” 

“It’s our first Presidents Day together. I made plans. A full day of plans.”

Ben groaned again, but there was a smile behind it. “You know most people just celebrate this holiday by shopping, right?”

“Most people are idiots.” Seriously, they were. Although if she’d needed a new car, there were some great deals going on…but she didn’t need a new car. Still. That wasn’t a good way to celebrate the birthday of a man who was not only the first president, but also probably the best president, and definitely one of the top five sexiest presidents. 

At that, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her over into the bed. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me about our plans. Are we going to boat across Pimental Creek and pretend it’s the Delaware?”

“I thought about that, but it’s kind of cold out, so no. I don’t want to get sick.” 

“Are we baking Washington a birthday cake?” 

“Close.” 

“Cherry pie.” 

She grinned. “You’re catching on.” 

“And…?”

“Hand me my purse.” He did, and she scrambled into a sitting position and pulled out the first of two DVDs. “ _Rediscovering George Washington_. It’s only ninety minutes. But there aren’t a ton of good documentaries about George Washington, so…” 

Ben cocked an eyebrow at her. “Another president?” She nodded. “The Ken Burns one on Thomas Jefferson?” 

She rewarded him with a kiss, and pulled out the DVD case to show him. “How’d you know?”

“Once I told you it was my favorite presidential documentary,” he said. “And you remember everything. So I was hoping.” 

“That one’s three hours,” she said. “The perfect length for cuddling, right? Not so short that it doesn’t do the subject justice, not so long that we get distracted and forget to watch the end. I have a bottle of dessert wine, too. The guy at the liquor store said it would go with the cherry pie.” 

He just gazed at her, with one hand on her knee and a big dopey grin on his face. 

“What?” She snuggled next to him, on the outside of the covers since she still had her shoes on. 

“Love you,” he said, which he said at least three times a day now, but it still made her insides glow every time, especially times like right now, when he kissed her before she could say it back. 

Leslie was just thinking about taking off her coat, and maybe her shoes, and quite possibly her pants, when a huge crash from the living room indicated that someone had fallen over the drum kit. Champion started barking. 

“So, I should get dressed,” Ben said. “Busy day, right?” 

“Right.” They both sat up. 

Then he made his numbers robot face. “It doesn’t quite add up, though.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Assuming we leave here in half an hour, an hour or so at JJ’s, go to your house, and then what? Two hours to make the pie?”

“Probably not that long. I already made the crust.”

“And then lunch at some point, and four and a half hours of documentary. That only puts us at mid-afternoon, maybe early evening.”

“What’s your point?”

“You said we had a full day scheduled.”

“Well, if you’re good, I was going to show you how Martha Washington would kiss.” 

To her surprise, Ben flinched. 

“What?” she demanded. “You like roleplay.” 

“Not _Washington_ , though. Please don’t make me do Washington.”

“Ben, he’s like the fourth sexiest president.”

“According to whom?”

“Me. According to me.”

Ben rubbed his temples. “Leslie. Washington had wooden teeth.” 

“That’s a myth. His dentures were likely made out of the teeth of slaves.” 

“That might actually be worse. And he wore that awful wig—”

“Another myth. He just powdered his hair. You don’t have to do that. Unless you want to, of course.” It had the potential to get messy, anyway. She wasn’t really sure if she wanted her bed to be full of cornstarch.

“And,” Ben said, raising his eyebrow, “he was likely sterile from smallpox.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t get it up, just that he couldn’t have kids. Come on, Ben. He established the judiciary system, and the cabinets, _and_ he freed all his slaves in his will. That’s sexy.” 

In lieu of a verbal rebuttal, Ben wrapped his arms around her from behind, and kissed down her neck. “ _You’re_ sexy.” The sleeves of his t-shirt were askew now, and she ran her hand all the way up his bicep, appreciating it. 

“You know what else we could do?” she asked.

“Lock the door and have sex right now?” 

“No. Well, we could. _Or_ we could find a cherry tree and I could watch you cut it down. I have a really sharp axe. Ron sharpened it for me.” 

Ben groaned, and buried his face in her neck. “Come on,” he said, the words muffled by her hair. “Everybody knows that one’s a myth.” 

“Mm. But it’d still be sexy.” 

“No, it wouldn’t. I have no idea how to chop down a tree.” 

“I could teach you.” She could. Leslie was excellent at chopping trees. “Come on. You’d be totally sexy holding an axe.”

Ben kissed her neck again. “Sometimes,” he said, with a sigh, “and I’m not complaining about this by any means, but sometimes I think you think everything I do is—”

She spun around, sharp and fast, and kissed him. “I do think that,” she said, with a smile. “You know me. I cannot tell a lie.” 

\---

When she returned to work the next morning, she found a plush George Washington and a box of chocolate-covered cherries on her desk.


	6. Up All Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Ben experiences the fact that Leslie truly does not sleep.

**9:37 p.m.**

So, the thing was, Ben really didn’t _want_ to go to sleep. Not just now, considering how very interesting the past few hours had been. He’d learned a lot of things during those last few hours, which he’d been compiling into a mental list. He thought making a list might keep him awake longer; he thought maybe if he organized his thoughts a little bit more, then they would be more comprehensible; he thought a list was a good idea because Leslie loved lists so much, and he had started to think that he might already be in love with Leslie, a little bit. 

The list so far was: 

1\. Leslie had impossibly soft lips and was very good at using them for kissing (not surprising—or at least, exactly what he’d been hoping for)  
2\. Up close, really close, Leslie smelled a little bit like whipped cream (again, not all that surprising)  
3\. Leslie’s house was terrifying (it was a little surprising, how terrifying her house was)  
4\. Leslie was really, really, really, really… _really_ excellent in bed (apparently she was good at everything, other than housekeeping)  
5\. Leslie thought _he_ was really, really, really, really… _really_ excellent in bed (she had told him so, in those exact words, and his brain exploded, and then they had had sex again even though it should have been physiologically impossible at that point)

Those last two, in particular, were maybe the most interesting things Ben had ever learned, and it was imperative that he not forget them. Not that he would forget them. Just…the last few days had been kind of physically and emotionally exhausting, after all. First there was all the stress. He’d slept, what, two hours the night before, between the uncomfortable sofa and Chris’s twelve bathroom trips and Leslie being on the other side of the wall? Then dinner tonight somehow wound up being pancakes, and he was definitely starting to crash from the maple syrup high. All that, combined with the very satisfying physical exertion, and the nice warm shower, and the well-worn, incredibly comfortable Parks Department t-shirt from 2004 that Leslie had loaned him, and the fact that her _bed_ was really soft and warm, and _Leslie_ was really soft and warm…

That was something else he had learned today, that touching Leslie was kind of the greatest thing ever. He was doing it right now. She was sitting up, and he was lying down, and he had his arm wrapped around her thigh, which was wearing the most _adorable_ pink plaid pajamas. He really liked her legs in those pajamas, and he liked her legs out of those pajamas…thinking wasn’t usually this hard, was it?

So no, he didn’t want to go to sleep, but he was rapidly losing that battle. 

“Hey,” she said, giving him a good poke on the shoulder. “You’re not calling it quits on me, are you? Should I make some coffee?” 

He shook his head, as best he could manage.

“Because,” she continued, “as long as we’re doing this, my plan was to keep you up all night.” 

“God, I wish I could. Stay up all night.” 

“Your eyelids look all droopy. What gives? It’s early.” 

He tried to explain about the two hours of sleep the night before and the physical exertion and the sugar crash. Why wasn’t _she_ more tired? 

Dimly, he became aware that she’d stuck her hands inside the t-shirt, and she was rubbing his shoulders. She was good at that too. It felt so good… _she_ felt so good…

 

**11:54 p.m.**

He had to pee.

Great. The light was on in the hallway, which meant that Andy and April had left it on all night when they left for the Mouse Rat gig and…

He wasn’t in his own house. 

The sheets smelled like Leslie’s shampoo. Because they were Leslie’s sheets. Because he was in her house. 

There was only a tiny sliver of light coming in from under the bedroom door. Ben tried to recall a mental 3-D map of the obstacle course that was her bedroom floor, hoping he’d be able to find his way to the bathroom without breaking a toe or waking her up or whatever. 

He slid out of bed, took half a step, fell over something, and crashed into an overloaded bookshelf. 

He swore.

Leslie flung open the door and switched the light on. “Are you okay?”

The thing he’d tripped over turned out to be his own shoe. “I’m fine.” All of him was a little sore, but that was okay, he was happy about that. “Where were you?”

“Just going over some of the Little League stuff in the other room. I couldn’t sleep.” 

“Oh.” Maybe she’d slept more the night before than he had. 

When he came back from the bathroom, she was tucked into the sheets. 

And she was naked. 

“Again!” Leslie yelled, grinning. 

Okay, he could stay awake for that…

 

**1:32 a.m.**

He was floating in a field…a baseball field…with a bunch of raccoons. He was teaching the raccoons how to pivot properly for the 4-6-3 double play. The raccoons weren’t very good listeners; they kept chewing on their gloves instead of…

Leslie was there too. She was playing first base, but she kept dropping his throws because she was sitting cross-legged on first base, in some sort of web chat. 

“Ann! Ben and I hooked up!” 

A raccoon bit Ben’s ungloved right hand, and he thrashed. His hand smashed into Leslie’s computer… 

He opened his eyes again, and found his right hand _actually on the screen of Leslie’s laptop._

“Sorry,” he said, although he wasn’t sure what he was sorry for. Were there raccoons or weren’t there? “What are you doing?”

“Go back to sleep,” she said, kissing his knuckles. “I’m just playing with iMovie.” 

 

**2:54 a.m.**

“Ben. Ben. Ben. Hey. Ben.”

These blankets were really heavy, especially over his hips. Blankets? No. Not blankets. Blankets didn’t poke you. 

It was getting harder and harder to convince his eyes to open.

“Good lord!” His head jerked. Thank goodness there was a pillow there. He’d still managed to rattle the headboard. 

“Sorry,” Leslie said. She was straddling him—that must have been what was heavy—and her face was inches from his. 

“Are you still awake?”

“Yeah. I don’t need a whole lot of sleep.” 

“What’s _not a whole lot of sleep_?” 

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Whatever. Hey, you’re awake now.” 

He yawned. “I guess I am.” 

Leslie beamed. “Well, as long as you’re up, can we make out some more?”

Dimly, Ben remembered the morning after the camping trip. What was it she had said then? Something about sleeping for seven hours, which was twice as long as she usually slept?

Good _lord_. 

Then he couldn’t think about it anymore, as she’d taken his lack of answer to _can we make out_ as a very enthusiastic _yes_.

He didn’t mind. 

 

**4:14 a.m.**

Ben jerked upright, his heart pounding. 

“Bad dream?”

He clutched at his chest. “I can’t remember. I just got the sensation—do you ever feel like someone’s staring at you?” 

She looked down, and fiddled with the edge of the flat sheet. “Sorry. That was me.” 

After about thirty seconds, he finally thought to ask “ _Why_?” 

“Why what?”

“Why were you staring at me? Why aren’t you asleep yet?”

She bit her lower lip for half a second, brows knitted. Then her expression cleared. “Well, I don’t know why I’m not asleep,” she said, brightly ( _brightly_ , at four in the morning, good lord. _Brightly_ ). “But I was staring at your face because I like it.” 

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that, other than “Are you sure you aren’t tired?” 

She shook her head.

“Okay.” He sighed. “What do I have to do to _make_ you tired?”

Leslie grinned, wriggled next to him, and whispered in his ear. 

He did those things. 

 

**5:27 a.m.**

He woke up, sweating. When had it gotten so warm in here? It felt like he was in bed with a giant hot water bottle.

Oh. No. He was in bed with a tiny blonde hot water bottle. Leslie was plastered to his side, with one of her legs wrapped around one of his, clinging for dear life, like a parasite. He was too tired to restructure his metaphors. Too tired and too uncomfortably warm.

But she was _asleep_. She was completely still and silent and radiating body heat like a sugar-burning furnace. 

He wondered how many times he’d dreamed about waking up in bed with Leslie cuddled next to him. Hundreds, probably. This was about twelve thousand times less comfortable than he’d hoped it would be. 

But she was asleep.

He didn’t move. 

 

**8:02 a.m.**

The other side of the bed was empty. Of course it was.

Ben staggered into the bathroom, and was unsurprised to discover large, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He’d heard the expression “bone tired” plenty of times (Chris was fond of chalking it up to a lack of calcium supplements), but he wasn’t sure he’d felt that way since...college all-nighters, or something. 

His head hurt. 

When he came out of the bathroom, Leslie was in bed again, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with her—yeah, he was pretty sure she’d done something to her hair already, even though she was still in her pajamas. 

“Hi,” she said. 

“Hi.” He slid in next to her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Her hair smelled like whipped cream. Did that mean she’d had coffee already? He hoped there was coffee. He could really use some coffee. 

“So, I have an important question for you.”

“Is it about coffee?” Please, he thought, please let it be about coffee. Leslie shook her head, and her curls bounced and hit him in the face. He brushed them away. 

“How do you feel,” she asked, with all the gravitas of an official court proceeding, “about morning sex?” 

As it turned out, he felt pretty great about that. 

And then he took a nap.


	7. A Break in the Continuum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April secretly does nice things for everyone in the office.

It starts because she’s bored. 

She’s been doing more stuff around the office since Leslie’s campaign picked up, but still, work is boring and dumb and she needs to do something to amuse herself. She can’t make out with Andy right now; he’s off helping Leslie with something. So she sneaks across the street during her lunch break, goes to the newsstand, and buys Andy a box of Cracker Jacks. Whatever, it’s cheap, and if she wants to buy her husband a box of Cracker Jacks it’s not like anyone’s going to stop her. She leaves the box on Andy’s desk and doesn’t say anything. 

When he comes back from wherever they were (someplace outside and muddy, judging by his pants), he gasps, tears the box open, and spills most of the Cracker Jacks over the floor trying to pour them in his mouth. Then he runs over to her desk and says something muffled that she’s pretty sure is “Honey, you’re the best,” but it’s hard to tell because he hasn’t swallowed yet. He sprays her face with little bits of caramel when he says it. Then he kisses her. 

“Gross,” April says. “Your breath smells like peanuts.” 

The prize turns out to be a fake tattoo. Of a clown. Andy runs into the bathroom, giggling, and returns with the clown plastered to the middle of his forehead.

That’s her husband.

**

The next day she’s browsing one of the Pawnee music boards, looking for potential Mouse Rat gigs, when she stumbles across a thread from some anonymous jackass who claims he (or she, who knows) has discovered a secret government conspiracy to cover up the true identity of Duke Silver. Right. Like anyone knows Duke Silver’s secret identity. 

Whoever this moron is claims that Duke Silver works for the Pawnee government, and…shit. 

Quickly, April composes a long, mildly hysterical, but well-reasoned diatribe (she knows how arguing on the internet works) which proves, definitively, that Duke Silver is in fact a long-distance truck driver. She fabricates some really compelling stories as evidence and Photoshops a picture from one of Duke’s album covers into some truck stop diner she finds on the internet. She posts it all under the name “Janet S,” waits half an hour, responds in histrionics when the original poster tries to disprove her claims.

By the end of the day, the internet is hers. Totally and completely hers. All those years of trolling finally paid off, she thinks. 

She forwards the thread to Ron.

Ron says nothing, but he nods at her on his way out the door that evening, and she knows what that means.

**

It’s easy to do nice things for Andy and Ron, though. She needs more of a challenge. 

Then she wonders what the hell she’s thinking. 

She texts Orin. _Is it weird if I kind of want to do nice things for people I work with?_

He texts back. _Fizethetek kártyával?_

April can’t even tell what language that is.

Whatever, Orin.

**

When she’s at the mall with her mom that weekend, she nabs a few extra chocolate body butter samples from the Body Shop, which she leaves on Tom’s desk the next Monday. 

Tom spends the whole day making inappropriate sexual remarks. Chocolate, sex, his skin color, sex, a bunch of dumb singers she’s never heard of, sex. 

So, pretty much the reaction she expected.

**

When she’d first become an intern at the Parks Department, April had begun hiding all the Splenda. What? She’d been doing Jerry a favor. He was the only one who used it anyway. So what if he had to walk down the hall to the cafeteria every time he wanted Splenda in his coffee? It was good for him to get some exercise. 

She’d never figured out why he didn’t just think to bring a box from home and lock it in his desk. 

Anyway, a box of Splenda has been delivered once a month with all the other coffee supplies. So now April has something like forty-five boxes of Splenda hidden around the office. 

On Tuesday, she retrieves a box of Splenda from the best hiding place—the bottom drawer of Jerry’s desk, which apparently he hadn’t opened in the past four years—and sets it by the coffee pot. 

Jerry automatically goes down to the cafeteria for Splenda anyway.

He doesn’t notice the box for over two weeks. When he finally sees it, he weeps.

**

While she’s waiting for Jerry to notice the Splenda, April gives Chris three movie tickets.

**

Ben doesn’t work for the Parks department, or even the government anymore, but he isn’t awful, so she figures she might as well do something nice for him. The next time she orders a pizza for dinner, she orders a calzone too. An extra gross one, with spinach and mushrooms and onions—all the crap he usually gets. 

He looks confused.

“What?” she says. “We eat your food all the time. I figured we owed you at least one meal.” Probably closer to ninety, but Ben’s the numbers freak in this house and he gave up counting after the second week, so April isn’t going to count either.

“Well, thanks.” He blinks at the calzone a bunch of times, but he eats it, and seems to be in a pretty good mood. 

She does the dishes that night too. 

Later in the evening, she walks past Ben’s door and hears him muttering “Leslie, are you sure April’s been acting normal at work?”

**

Donna does nice things for herself all the time, so she’s hard. 

Then one day Jean-Ralphio shows up, looking for Tom. April waits until she knows Donna’s watching, and then she teases Jean-Ralphio about his sex life until he cries.

After he leaves to go shopping with Tom, Donna gives her a high-five.

**

Leslie is the hardest. It would be weird to give Leslie a stupid little gift; Ben gives her those all the time and then they make out and it’s gross. She doesn’t have a secret identity that needs protecting. She keeps extra chocolate syrup for coffee in her desk already. She can deal with Jean-Ralphio on her own. 

One day she thinks of something.

God, it’s going to be so much work. But…Leslie deserves it. 

She spends a full week planning, secretly collecting all the supplies she needs, making the appropriate phone calls. Phone calls. God. Leslie better appreciate this. She’s so busy with her campaign and her job that she doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but Ron does. So April has to explain what she’s up to. Ron’s mustache twitches, and he offers to drive her over. 

On Tuesday, they head over to Pawnee Central. 

The gym is just as gross and lame as she remembers it being, and the students are just as bored as she was during every school assembly, but damn it, she’s going to do this for Leslie. 

So she takes the handheld microphone and crosses to the middle of the gym floor. Public speaking is the worst. She takes a deep breath and glances over at Ron, who nods. Nervously, April smoothes her skirt and tries to summon her lively Puerto Rican side. 

“Okay, who’s eighteen or going to be eighteen before our next municipal elections?” 

She can’t tell them who to vote for, she knows that. But she can give them the voter registration forms, and the city-approved information on each candidate’s qualifications and positions, so screw that, because anyone who takes even half a second to think about it is going to vote for Leslie. 

They get sixty-seven kids registered to vote that afternoon.

And once they’re off school property, April pulls France and Bulgaria aside and gives them a stack of Knope 2012 buttons and stickers. 

They stop for burgers on the way back to the office. “Nice work, Ludgate,” says Ron.

She takes a bite of her burger so she doesn’t have to answer.

Two days later, France stops by the Parks department with a Knope button pinned to her backpack, and Leslie goes into the main room, looking a little confused. 

“Hi, Cassidy. I thought we weren’t meeting about Model UN for another two weeks.”

“We aren’t,” says France. “I just wanted to—”

“Outside,” says April. She shoos them through the door.

Leslie returns with her makeup smudged and tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Oh, _April_ ,” she says, and then she just starts sobbing and April has to, like, pat her on the back. “You got all of them registered to vote?”

“You know I couldn’t make anybody promise to vote for you, right?” April mutters. 

“That doesn’t matter. It’s enough that you got them interested in the election process.” 

Oh god, now Leslie’s sniffling. April widens her eyes at Andy, and Andy throws a box of Kleenex across the room. It hits Leslie in the back of the head. Ron steps over and picks up the box, handing Leslie a tissue. 

“Thanks, Andy,” she says, blowing her nose. 

For the next eight workdays, April has to endure Leslie making lovey eyes at her through the glass partition. Every ten minutes. Like clockwork. 

On the ninth day, April finally smiles back. 

**

That just leaves Ann. Ugh. Ann. Gross, stupid Ann. 

It’s not like she even has to do this. Ann doesn’t work for Parks. She did nice stuff for Ben and Chris, though. 

Still. _Ann_. She doesn’t even know what Ann likes, other than lame things and making out with people. One afternoon, when Ann’s at the hospital, April breaks into her office. It’s even lamer than anyone would suspect. Normal boring people have, like, pictures and stuff in their offices, but Ann’s so boring that she just has dumb health-related jokey stuff. And none of it is funny.

It gives April an idea, though. A good one. Ann will never even suspect it’s April’s work.

She buys a small picture frame on the way home, then drags a box of photos she took at the Harvest Festival out of her closet. 

They hug all the time anyway. No one will think it’s weird if Ann has a framed photo of Leslie on her desk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to the internet, Orin's text is Hungarian for "Do you accept credit cards?"


	8. Heart-Shaped Waffle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie and Ben, post-Operation Ann.

After April left, they both glanced at their watches. 

“Crap,” Leslie said. “We missed our reservation.”

Ben shrugged. “We could still head over there and see if we can get a table.” 

“Yeah, we could, but…”

“Well, don’t tell me you’re not hungry,” he said, gripping her hand tightly. 

Leslie sighed. “Seriously, weirdest Valentine’s Day ever.” She'd wanted this day to be perfect, but none of it had gone entirely according to plan. Well, Ben had solved his present, and that was something, and Ann was on a date, but...

“Not the worst, I hope.”

“No, not the worst,” she said. Jeez, though, Ann and Tom. She still couldn’t believe that, even if she was looking at it. “One year I’d been dating this guy and he sent me a giant heart-shaped cookie and a dozen roses, but the roses were dead and the cookie said _I think we should see other people_ in pink frosting.”

“Who would do—who did that to you? Why would anyone—I’ll—” He took a deep breath. “I’m not going to punch anybody else. But seriously, Leslie—” It was adorable, really, how flustered Ben was when he got outraged on her behalf. Right now his hair was sticking straight up, like he was a bird doing weird territorial bird things in a nature documentary. 

She grinned, and kissed him. “It’s okay, I’m over it. He was kind of a jerk anyway.” 

“ _Kind of_ a jerk?”

They started walking back to their cars, fingers intertwined in the cold. 

“Okay, so what was your worst Valentine’s Day?” She crossed the fingers of her free hand in her pocket, hoping he wasn’t about to say _this crazy, impossible scavenger hunt you sent me on_. 

“Probably the year that my ex-girlfriend, who I was not completely over at the time, called to tell me she’d just gotten engaged to my ex-roommate.” 

Just the thought of that made her nose wrinkle. “Ew.” 

“Yeah. Ew.”

“So did you enjoy the scavenger hunt?” she asked, even though she only sort of wanted to know the answer.

“Honestly?” 

She gave him a firm nod. “Honestly.” 

“Honestly, Leslie, it was so hard.”

“I know. I know I made it—”

“But I had a great time. We all did. Honestly.” 

“All? Who’s _all_?” 

“I had to go to Ron and Andy for help. Mostly Ron.” 

“Ron does love puzzles,” she said. 

Crap, though. This was why she kept getting dumped so creatively, wasn’t it? She drove all her boyfriends away by putting too much effort into ridiculous things. Valentine’s Day wasn’t supposed to be a competition, after all; how had she forgotten that? Why couldn’t she have just…sent flowers or something, and said “Meet me here at nine,” like a normal girlfriend?

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, blinking back a tear.

“For what?”

“For being impossible.” 

“You’re not impossible.”

They were back at the Li’l Sebastian memorial now, and Ben guided her towards one of the benches that surrounded it. She sat. 

“Okay, you’re a little impossible,” Ben said. “But that’s not a _problem_ , Leslie.” 

“Of course it’s a problem.” He was still standing, holding both her hands in his, clearly searching for…something. The plane he’d hired to break up with her via skywriting, probably. No, that was dumb, Ben loved her and they weren’t going to break up. She hoped.

“It’s not a problem,” he repeated. “It’s just...look, Leslie, you’re _so_ thoughtful, all the time, but especially on holidays and—and gift-giving occasions. And it isn’t easy to live up to that. That’s all.”

She’d been holding her breath, and it came out in a rush, now. “You don’t have to live up to anything,” she said, quickly. 

“I know. The thing is, though—” He swallowed, hard. “The thing is, I _want_ to, anyway.”

She met his eyes with hers, and nodded, unsure of what a nod meant under these circumstances.

A silence stretched between them, half comfortable, half…not. After what seemed like an eternity (but was probably only ten seconds), Ben broke the silence by swooping onto the bench and kissing her, hard. 

Leslie’s heart thumped happily under her coat, and she left her arms where they’d ended up, wrapped snugly around _his_ coat. “So now what?” she asked. 

“You go home,” Ben said, “and I’ll meet you there in, say…half an hour?” 

“What about dinner?”

“That’s why I need the half-hour.” 

She took advantage of that time to reapply her makeup and change into fresh, sexier panties. 

Eventually her doorbell rang, and she opened it to find Ben standing there with a giant Bed, Bath and Beyond bag at his feet, a grocery bag in one hand, and a bakery box in the other. 

Inside the Bed, Bath and Beyond bag was…a heart-shaped waffle maker. “I know you already have about twelve waffle makers,” he said, apologetically, “but I couldn’t resist this one. It’s been hidden under my bed for weeks.” 

She loved it. 

Inside the grocery bag was a box of pancake mix, a dozen eggs, four cartons of heavy whipping cream, and a bottle of the fanciest hot fudge topping one could purchase in Pawnee. 

“What’s the hot fudge for?”

He cocked his head. “Have you never had a chocolate-covered waffle, Leslie?”

She loved the groceries too. 

Inside the bakery box was a giant heart-shaped cookie. It said _I think you and I should make out with each other_ in pink icing. 

She loved _Ben_. 

Things might have gotten a little out of control in her kitchen. She was still finding random dabs of whipped cream a week later, and the occasional stray drop of hot fudge. 

They never even got around to eating the cookie. Not that night, anyway. Or watching the Lincoln documentary she'd DVR'd.

The chocolate stain refused to come out of Ben’s shirt. 

Leslie’s sexy panties eventually turned up in a bowl of faux grapes. The new sexy negligee Ann had helped her pick out last week remained stashed in her underwear drawer. It seemed unnecessary.

“So, weird but good, right?” she asked, when they’d finally washed all the whipped cream out of their hair and were climbing into bed.

The waffle pendant was still around her neck. Ben smiled and tapped it with his finger, so that it twisted back and forth on its chain. 

“Weird,” he agreed. “But the best.”

She switched off the bedside lamp. 

“Hey,” Ben said. “What _was_ the answer to the cryptex? ‘Cause Ron and Andy both guessed—” He whispered the last word into her ear.

“Crap on a rocket launcher,” she said. “They _both_ thought that?”


	9. Moving Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, canon definitely went a different way. Prompt was "Ben moving in."

“You’re not taking any of the furniture, are you?” April demanded. “Because if you are, just so you know, we’ve had sex on all of it.” 

Andy giggled. Just for a little bit, though, ‘cause then he remembered why they were having this conversation. It was kind of a bummer. “Dude, I can’t believe you’re moving in with Leslie. That is awesomesauce. But we’re gonna miss you. But that’s awesomesauce. Big step, huh?”

Ben seemed kind of twitchy today. He kept wiping his palms on his pants. “Yeah,” he said, staring out at the backyard. “Big step.” He jerked his head around and gazed at the living room furniture. “Anyway, no, I’m not taking all the furniture. Just a couple of things from my room. Smaller things.” 

“Cool,” said April. 

Andy thought of something. “Ooh. What about the dishes?”

“Technically, those are yours anyway. But no.” Ben sighed. “Leslie’s house…already has everything in it.”

Champion wandered over and placed his head on Ben’s knee. He barked once, and Ben jumped. 

Oh, man. Andy knew what this was. Burly had acted just like this right before he moved. Or at least, Andy thought he remembered Burly acting like this. It was kinda hard to remember anything about those few weeks, since that was right when he and April got together. They’d done kind of a lot of drinking during those weeks. And sex. They’d done a lot of sex. Which had been awesome. But it also made it hard for Andy to remember anything about those weeks, other than that they’d been awesome. 

And now Ben would get to do lots of sex with Leslie, like, all the time. And _that_ would be awesome. For Ben, not for Andy. It would just be—whoa, that was weird to think about. He wondered if Leslie and Ben had ever done it in the living room. Like, on the couch that Andy was sitting on just then.

He laughed. “Gross,” he said, which, whoops. He hadn’t really meant to say that out loud. 

Ben rubbed his temples. “Yes,” he said. “Leslie’s house is a little gross, in places. But she’s—she’s going to clean.” 

They all sat in silence for a few moments. April sprawled on the floor so she could scratch Champion’s neck, Ben gave a deep sigh and fiddled with the end of his necktie (that was hilarious, Andy thought, that Ben was wearing a necktie on a Saturday), and Andy stared at the piles of dirty clothes that he and April had scattered around the living room during this morning’s laundry fight. Ben had taught them how to do laundry, he remembered, with all those crazy rules about not using bubble bath. And Ben had taught them how to do a checking account, or at least April had said she knew how to do it now. And he’d shown them how to use the kitchen without setting off the fire alarm, and how to tell if food had spoiled without eating it first, and how to unclog toilets, and why you shouldn’t flush anything other than paper and poop, and…

Oh, man, they were going to miss him. Andy’s face felt sad now. He slid onto the floor so Champion could give him kisses. Dog kisses made everything better. So did April’s kisses, but Champion had a bigger tongue, so there was that to consider. 

“I’m not going far, you know,” Ben said. 

April stood up, pulled some balled-up papers out of the corner of the foosball table, and threw them at Ben. They bounced off his head and hit the floor in front of Champion, who gave one of the paper balls a good chew. That was hilarious; Champion thought the paper ball was a real dog ball. He was the best dog ever. 

“Can you do our taxes before you go?” April asked. Oh, right. Andy tugged the paper out of Champion’s mouth and handed it to Ben. 

“Yeah, I’ve never had to do taxes before,” Andy said, helpfully. Suddenly, he remembered that Ben was nervous about moving in with Leslie and probably needed a hug, so he leapt from the floor, pinned Ben to the sofa with one arm, and gave him a noogie with the other.

“You guys haven’t done your taxes yet?” Ben said. He sounded like something hurt. Maybe this hug was too hard. “It’s _June_.”

\---

Gosh, it sure was nice that Leslie and Ben were moving in together. Leslie had always been such a good boss, and she was such a nice person, so of course Jerry was happy to help Ben move in, even if his back wasn’t going to allow him to do very much. 

He’d brought a housewarming gift with him, a lovely one that he and Gail had picked out together. For now, he left it in the car. That seemed easier, since the outside of Leslie’s house looked really chaotic right now. Ron’s Buick was parked outside, with some furniture strapped to the roof, but there was also a U-Haul in the driveway, with its rear door open. Goodness, Ben had a lot of stuff. Jerry grabbed one of the boxes, the biggest one he could reach that his back would let him lift, and carried it to the front porch. 

“Leslie? Hello?” He didn’t want to just barge in, but the front door was ajar, so he gave it a tiny push. “Anyone here?” 

No one answered, so he went and got another box and put that on the porch too. _Old newspapers_ , this one read. Wow, they really were perfect for each other. Leslie collected old newspapers too, didn’t she? 

Jerry had moved probably six or seven boxes out of the U-Haul and onto the porch, calling up the stairs each time he approached the house, before he finally heard somebody upstairs. He ran back to his car as quickly as he could, grabbed the housewarming gift, and rushed back inside, stopping only to pull up his pants, which had started slipping. 

“Hello?” he panted. 

April appeared from around a corner, running backwards, carrying one end of a rolled-up carpet. “Out of the way, Jerry!” she yelled. He had to jump sideways to avoid her, and he fell into a very full coat rack. 

“Jerry,” acknowledged Ron, from the other end of the carpet. 

“God, who put all these boxes on the porch?” April mumbled. 

Jerry tried to hoist himself off the floor, quickly, but only succeeded in getting tangled in one of the many coats. 

Leslie appeared, then, covered in dust, with her hair in pigtails, followed closely by Ann. “Jerry, no!” she shrieked. “The coat rack stays. I get to keep the coat rack, right, Ann?” 

“Of course you get to keep the coat rack,” Ann said. “The coat rack has a purpose.” She leaned down and offered Jerry a hand, which he was grateful for since he really didn’t like being on the floor all that much. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, right as Leslie said loudly that she wasn’t fine, she wanted that carpet back.

“Leslie,” said Ann, and gosh, she did sound sterner than usual. 

Leslie took a deep breath. “I know. This is a positive step in both my relationship with Ben and my relationship with stuff.” 

“Exactly,” said Ann, firmly, and both women stepped onto the porch. Jerry followed. “Leslie!” Ann yelled. “When did you get away from me to unload all these boxes?” 

“I didn’t unload any boxes!” 

“Then why are your boxes of newspapers on the porch? I thought we agreed to get rid of those!”

“We did! I put them in the U-Haul, Ann. You saw me.”

There was a familiar sinking feeling in Jerry’s chest. “Oh, gosh, Ann,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“Damn it, Jerry!” yelled both women, in unison. 

“I thought we were unloading Ben’s stuff,” he said.

“No! We’re getting all of Leslie’s useless crap out of here—”

“Ann, none of this is useless and none of it is crap—”

“—so that Ben’s stuff will fit. He’s not moving in until next weekend.”

“Oh, Leslie, I am so sorry,” Jerry repeated. He quickly picked up one of the boxes. “I’ll put these right back on the U-Haul.” Then he remembered the housewarming gift. He might as well give that to Leslie now, even if Ben wasn’t moving in just yet. 

He dropped the box on his foot, shoved it off, and limped inside to find the gift box on the floor, under the pile of coats. 

“Here, Leslie,” he said, handing the box to her. “Just a little gift for you two from me and Gail.”

The wrapping paper had completely ripped down the middle, which Leslie apparently noticed, because she took the box from him, wrinkled her nose, and asked, “An entire case of hemorrhoid cream?”

“No, no,” he said, quickly. “That’s just the box we had to put it in.” 

“Gross, Jerry,” said April, suddenly appearing on the front steps with Ron. “I didn’t want to know that about your butt.” 

He glared at her, half-heartedly, and turned back to Leslie. “Well, you might as well go ahead and open it, since the paper’s torn.” 

She smiled. “Thank you, Jerry. That was very thoughtful. I’m sure Ben will think so, too.” 

He beamed. Leslie was going to love this, he just knew it. They all watched Leslie tear off the paper and bust open the packing tape. 

“Oh, god, Jerry!” said Ann, rolling her eyes. “Seriously?” 

“What are they?” demanded April, and Leslie held up two matching wooden objects. 

“Matching his-and-hers birdhouses,” Jerry said, proudly. “Gail bought them plain, at the craft store, and I painted them myself.” 

Ann groaned, pressing a palm to her forehead. “Jerry. Do you have any idea _how many birdhouses_ I just made Leslie throw away?”

\---

Today was going to be one of _the_ best days Chris had ever experienced. The sun was shining brightly; the pollution from the Sweetums factory was surprisingly light, so his lungs felt even more spectacularly healthy than usual; and he could think of nothing he would rather do than help one of his oldest, closest buddies move into his girlfriend’s house. 

He was so excited that he ran the five miles over to April and Andy and Champion’s house, instead of driving. It took him almost no time, even though his backpack was fully loaded with nutritious snacks, to keep up everyone’s energy throughout the day. Proper nutrition was so important, and even after more than a year of living here, he was occasionally dismayed by how little most residents of Pawnee seemed to understand that.

“Ben!” he called, with a big wave, as he jogged up the driveway. This was so exciting. Chris still didn’t fully comprehend how Ben had fallen for a short blonde, but wasn’t that just the beauty of life, that the strangest things happened all the time, and that wonderful people found love?

“Hey, Chris,” Ben said. Oh dear. His hair looked a tad depressed this morning. Maybe he hadn’t eaten a healthy enough breakfast.

“Can I offer you a homemade gluten-free protein bar?” Chris asked. “I have several flavors in my bag. My personal favorite is the mulberry flaxseed—”

“Did you run over here?” 

“I did. The weather’s lovely, isn’t it?” 

“It is,” Ben said, slowly, “but I was hoping to put stuff in your car.” 

Chris looked around. Ben’s car had a few boxes in the trunk, and there was a small pile of suitcases and a few pieces of office furniture by the garage door. “I assumed that you would have a moving van,” he said. 

“No, we’re borrowing Burly’s van.” 

“Well, how are you moving the furniture? Are we carrying it?” That sounded like an exciting challenge.

“Carry—no, Chris, it’s six miles away. That's what the van is for. We’re not carrying a desk that far.”

At that moment, a delightfully decrepit cargo van pulled into the driveway. Andy honked the horn loudly a couple of times, some of the loudest honks Chris had ever heard, possibly because he was standing less than four feet from the van when the honks occurred. There was a slight ringing in his ears—Chris’s hearing was _very_ sensitive—but he could still hear happy barking from the inside of the van. 

“Champion!” he called, and he opened the door so that Champion could give him a hug. Champion, even though he had only one front leg, gave literally the best dog hugs Chris had ever felt.

Even with Champion’s help, and even though the bottom seemed to fall out of every box Andy picked up, it took almost no time to load up the back half of the van. It was amazing what teamwork could accomplish!

“I can’t believe I have this much stuff,” Ben muttered, almost to himself. “When did I get it all? Is this what happens when you stay in one place for more than three months?” 

“See, we didn’t need my car after all,” Chris pointed out. He’d gotten some extra exercise _and_ partially saved the environment.

“Dude, I can’t believe you’re really moving out,” said Andy. 

“It’s about time,” said April.

Chris clasped Ben on the shoulder, and dragged him around the corner of the house. 

“Chris, what the—”

It was so important to express one’s feelings, viewpoints—one’s _Weltanschauung_ , if you will—on momentous occasions such as this, and he fully intended to do that now. It was very important to talk Ben through any of his lingering doubts and insecurities, so that he’d be in tip-top shape when they got to Leslie’s house. 

“Ben Wyatt,” he started, leaving his hand on Ben’s shoulder, but then the van horn honked again. 

“Come on,” yelled April. “Stop making out in the bushes. I know that’s what you’re doing. Get in the car.” 

Chris would have preferred to ride in Ben’s car, so that they could continue their discussion, but the front seat was loaded with books. And the van only had two seats. So he ran to Leslie’s house, which was amazing, and he felt positively _loaded_ with endorphins when he arrived to find the whole gang carrying boxes into Leslie’s charming bungalow. He’d jogged past Leslie’s house plenty of times before, but now he realized that he had literally never crossed the threshold. He said hi to the lovely Ann Perkins, grabbed the heaviest of the boxes, and sprinted up Leslie’s front steps. 

“Where does this box go?” he called, but no one answered, so he set it down and went outside for another.

Instead, Andy handed him Champion’s leash. “Hey, Chris, could you take him?” he said, quickly. “April dared me to drink an entire gallon of orange juice this morning and I have to pee so bad.” 

Champion appeared to need to empty his own bladder, so Chris took him to the backyard. It was fenced, so he let Champion off the leash (after a quick check of the perimeter, of course) and stood back, appreciating the house, which really was very delightful. One of the upstairs windows was open—Leslie’s bedroom, judging by the curtains—and although Chris certainly wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, his hearing was extremely sensitive. He tried to distract himself by examining two matching his-and-hers birdhouses that were hanging on the back porch, but their voices carried anyway.

“So I made some room in this closet,” Leslie was saying, “but it’s not very big to start with, so you might have to put some stuff in the spare room.” 

“Okay,” said Ben.

There was a brief pause, during which Chris observed one of the loveliest butterflies he had ever seen in his entire life, and then Leslie’s voice came through the curtains again. 

“I can’t believe this is really happening.” 

“I can’t believe your house is so empty.” 

“I can’t believe you only own a van’s worth of stuff.” 

“ _I_ can’t believe,” said Ben, “how much I love you.” 

There was a pause, during which Chris could hear nothing, but then Leslie asked, “Is everyone else still here?” 

“I think so.” 

“We should get rid of them.” 

“Or just hide until they leave,” Ben suggested. 

Chris blew his dog whistle, and Champion came running. He clipped on the leash and, although he typically had extremely strong willpower, he didn’t seem to be able to resist sneaking a glance up at the bedroom window. 

Two figures were silhouetted against the curtains, locked in an embrace so passionate it rivaled anything Chris had seen in any of the romantic movies he’d ever watched with the wonderful Ann Perkins, or the equally amazing Millicent Gergich…or, if he was being honest, any of the spectacular women with whom he’d had the privilege to socialize over the years.

“Good boy,” he said, giving Champion a good pat. “You are literally the most inspiring dog I have ever met.” 

Ben would be fine. Because he was one of the best people Chris knew. And so was Leslie. 

Maybe, Chris thought, as he led Champion back to the van, maybe now that he wasn’t traveling so much—maybe he should get a dog. 

Dogs were _excellent_ running partners.


	10. The Scavenger Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie needs help setting up a scavenger hunt for Ron's birthday. Ben/Ann friendship times.

One change Ann had made in her life, since Leslie had become her best friend, was that she now charged her cell phone in the kitchen instead of in her bedroom. Sure, she felt a tiny pang of guilt every morning that she saw missed calls or unread texts, but she needed sleep, and Leslie understood. Usually.

It had gotten a little bit worse since the campaign started. Before, Ann only woke up to find her phone clogged with voicemails about twice a week. Then it was every other morning. Then every morning, even after Ben took over the campaign. Things had gotten a little calmer since Leslie had cut down her Parks hours, but still, mornings like this—when she looked at her phone and found something like thirty-two messages from Leslie, in various formats—weren’t entirely unusual. 

So she just turned on the coffee pot, took her usual deep, calming breath, and tapped her phone’s touchscreen.

Leslie’s messages usually took a while to decipher, since Leslie liked to text one thing, and then call to amend that text, and sometimes send a follow-up email. The conclusion Ann came to on this particular morning was that, even though Leslie had promised Ron she’d cut down to two hours a day at City Hall, she still fully intended to spend all of her day in very important meetings, and could Ann please help out with some crucial work? All Ann had to do was go to campaign headquarters, and Ben would explain the rest of it. 

Had she specifically told Leslie that she was working a night shift at the hospital tonight and therefore had the day free? Possibly. She couldn’t remember. Leslie always seemed to know these things anyway, somehow. 

She sent Leslie a text saying _Okay, I’ll be there in less than an hour_ and almost instantly received one back saying _God bless you, Ann, you beautiful black-tufted marmoset._

Ann poured herself a cup of coffee. With a slight sense of dread, she flipped open her laptop and typed “black-tufted marmoset” into a Google image search. 

A spray of coffee hit her computer screen. 

She did _not_ look like that. 

After she’d wiped down her computer, she added _Remind Leslie about what constitutes an appropriate compliment (again)_ to her campaign to-do list. 

\--

Ben opened the door on just the second knock, restraining an eager Champion with one hand, and Ann had to try not to laugh—not because Champion was wearing running gear identical to Chris’s, but because she was never going get over the fact that of all possible men in the world, Leslie had fallen for one who put on a necktie to go to work in his own house. 

“So,” Ann said, trying to keep her face straight, “what’s the campaign crisis?” She slid inside and shut the door behind her, then knelt down to pet the dog. 

Ben’s brow wrinkled. “Campaign crisis? There’s no campaign crisis.” 

“Leslie said there was something crucial she needed both of us to help with.” 

“She didn’t tell you? It’s not campaign-related.” He sighed, led her into the living room area, and jerked his head at couple of large boxes Ann hadn’t seen before. “Remember what she got me for Valentine’s Day this year?” 

Ann nodded. 

“Well, Ron...got involved. And he loved it. He was a lot better at figuring out the clues than I was, to be honest.” That admission seemed to pain Ben a little bit, so Ann quickly gestured at the unfamiliar boxes.

“So what’s all this stuff?”

“Ron asked for a scavenger hunt for his birthday.” 

“Okay…”

“And we have to set it up.” 

Ann thought she saw where this was going now. “Because she’s in a meeting all day.” 

“She’s in a meeting _with Ron_ all day, which she deliberately scheduled so that Ron wouldn’t suspect anything and try to trail her.” 

“Is today Ron’s actual birthday?”

“Beats me,” Ben said. “Apparently it’s a closely guarded secret and we’re not supposed to tell him we know when it is. And we’re not to wrap any of the gifts because Ron doesn’t believe in wrapping paper. Which is good, because there are a million gifts. Leslie’s trying to make up for all the years she didn’t know when Ron’s birthday was.”

That sounded about right. 

Atop one of the boxes was a binder, neatly labeled with a computer printout, as always. _Leslie Barbara Knope’s Birthday Scavenger Hunt for Ronald Ulysses Swanson_. Ann looked up. “His middle name is Ulysses?” Her upper lip curled. 

Ben nodded, and held up a gift bag. “And I have this bag from April, with the specific instructions that she will kill us both if we peek at the gift, or if we tell Leslie about it.” 

“Is it a bomb?”

“Probably not?” Ben shrugged. “She said _she’d_ kill us, not that the present would.” 

Ann picked up one of the boxes. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

\---

Ann’s phone rang. 

“Leslie? I thought you were in a meeting.”

“We’re on a break. I’m in the ladies’ room.” Ann heard a toilet flush in the background. “How’s it going so far?”

“We’ve hidden about six clues already.” And four gifts, per Leslie’s instructions: a bottle of Scotch, Army-grade mustache trimmers, sandpaper, and a laminated menu from some steakhouse in Indianapolis. 

“That’s it? Ann, I don’t want to yell at you about this, but you have to go faster. There are forty-seven clues!”

“Well, we had a slight delay at the bowling alley.” Ann glanced over at Ben, who cringed. She grinned.

“Delay?” Leslie asked. “What for?”

“Ben got a talking-to from the manager. FYI, you guys aren’t allowed to make out in the locker room anymore.” 

\---

To hide clue number fourteen, and the associated gift of a can of unseasoned kidney beans, Ben had to climb a tree in Ramsett Park, and nearly hung himself when his necktie got tangled around a branch.

\---

Clue number thirty-eight was to be buried behind a specific bush in the parking lot of St. Joseph’s, along with four yards of heavy-duty canvas. Ann volunteered for that one, under the logic that it was marginally less weird for an employee of the hospital to be doing the digging.

\---

Every time Ann snuck a peek at April’s bag, she caught Ben looking at it too. 

“Are you _sure_ it’s not a bomb?” she asked.

“It isn’t ticking.” 

“Maybe April built a silent bomb.”

“Maybe,” Ben agreed. “But that would require trial and error, right? I haven’t noticed any explosions around the house lately.”

“Champion still has all three legs.”

Their laughter was interrupted by Leslie, texting to demand another progress report.

\---

At Ron’s favorite donut shop, Ann hid a package of smoked sausage links and clue number twenty-six, while Ben bought them both coffees. She peeled back the lid of hers only to discover he’d already put the perfect amount of milk in it.

“Dude,” she said. “You know how I like my coffee?” She’d probably made coffee in front of Ben before, but it wasn’t like that was the kind of thing people noticed or remembered, on the whole.

“Skim milk and half a sugar. I know a lot of things about you.” He stopped and shook his head. “That…didn’t come out right.”

“It so didn’t.”

“Leslie talks about you a lot.” 

Ann smiled into her paper cup. 

\---

They snuck into the Parks department to tape a whittling knife and clue number two to the underside of April’s desk.

“You didn’t look inside the bag, did you?” she demanded.

“You know what we just did?” Ann asked, when they got back in the car. 

Ben groaned, and clapped a hand to his forehead. “We gave her a _knife_.”

\---

“Is this Ron’s _house_?” They were at a small cabin in the woods. It had no street address and no mailbox, and they’d driven past the unmarked dirt driveway four times. They’d decided that this was not a slight on either of their navigation abilities, since the driveway didn’t go all the way to the road, and its mouth was concealed by the low-hanging branches of several trees. 

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “Doesn’t he have a cabin, too? Maybe this is the cabin.” 

Ann pulled a large, plain serving tray for deviled eggs from the back seat of the car. “I’m supposed to put this on the stump.” 

Ben scanned the premises. “What stump? There are lots of stumps.” 

She checked the directions again. “The stump with the axe in it.” 

“There are several stumps with axes in them.” He took a shaky breath. “Are we sure a serial killer doesn’t live here?”

They tried to text Leslie for clarification, but to neither of their surprise, Ron’s cabin didn’t get cell phone reception. 

Ann finally picked a stump by playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo. 

“Hey,” Ben said, suddenly, “we don’t have a hiding place for April’s thing. What if we just hung it from the doorknob here? Then we don’t have to work it in with the clues.” 

“Okay,” Ann agreed. She grabbed the bag and looped its handle over Ron’s doorknob.

They both stared at it for a moment, until Ann couldn’t take it anymore. She flipped the bag upside down.

“Whoops,” she said. “The wind blew that over.” 

A tiny plastic saxophone hit the ground.

After a moment of mutual contemplation, Ben said, “I don’t get it.” 

\---

They hid beef jerky at the Bulge (“Strangely appropriate,” remarked Ben), a new long-sleeved polo shirt at JJ’s, and a canister of Morton’s salt at the community center.

It took a while to convince the lumber yard manager at Lowe’s to let them conceal a first edition of _Call of the Wild_ in the stacks of pre-treated two-by-fours. Apparently Ron had made disparaging remarks about the quality of their decking materials in the past. 

“Good lord,” Ben said, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost two in the afternoon. Should we get lunch?” 

“I’d be down for lunch. Can we not go to JJ’s, though?”

“Yes.” He sounded relieved. “We can definitely not go to JJ’s.”

They wound up at Sue’s Salads, and pinky swore that they’d never tell Leslie.

\---

Ben put down his fork and made a face at his thumb. “I think got a splinter from the lumber yard.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m a nurse.” 

“It’s really fine. I’ll get it out later.” 

“Ben.” She used her best nurse voice, and reached in her purse for her emergency tweezers. “Hand.” 

He acquiesced. 

It wasn’t one splinter. It was a bunch of tiny little splinters, the ones that were nearly impossible to get out. 

“Ow,” Ben said, but he didn’t flinch, at least.

“Sorry. I can’t keep this from hurting.”

“No, I know. You’re a good nurse.” 

She smiled. “Leslie told you that too, huh?”

“When she had the flu. I asked who her doctor was, and she said ‘Ann’s my doctor, and she’s the most beautiful nurse in the world.’”

Ann snorted. “Yeah, well, Leslie was delirious that day.” 

“I’m pretty sure she’s described you as the most beautiful nurse in the world at least forty times in the past week alone.” 

“Nurse is fine. The other things are stranger.” 

Ben sat up a little straighter. “Wait. Does she call you odd things to your face, too?” 

She started counting them off on her fingers. “Beautiful tropical fish, beautiful rule-breaking moth, beautiful naïve sophisticated newborn baby—”

“Last week, she said I was ‘slight but powerful,’ which was weird enough, but then she said I had ‘a taut, narrow frame.’ I guess that’s accurate. But it’s still weird, right?”

“It’s still weird,” Ann agreed, going back to work on the splinter. “This morning, in a text message, she called me a beautiful black-tufted marmoset.” 

“I swear to god I heard her describe me as a sexy hummingbird.”

Oh, god. _Leslie_. Ann snorted. “At least she used the word ‘sexy,’ right?”

“She also called me a sexy elf king. To my face. Like it was a compliment.” 

Ann couldn’t hold her laughter back after that, even if she wasn’t done taking the splinter out. 

“And her celebrity sex list consists only of Joe Biden. _Joe Biden_ , Ann.” 

“I know. I know. I…don’t know what to tell you about that.”

“Well, at least I’m not a marmoset,” he said. 

They were both still laughing, Ann hunched over Ben’s hand with her tweezers, when she heard a somewhat hoarse, “Oh, hey, Ann.” 

Ann dropped her tweezers on the table and looked up. 

“Hi, Mark,” she said. 

“How’s it going?”

“Oh, fine. It’s fine. Busy, you know.” Mark was staring at Ben. “Um, Mark, have you met Ben? He—”

“Works for the state budget office. I know.” 

Suddenly, Ann remembered—Ben and Chris had offered Mark a buyout, the same week she’d broken up with him. 

“Ann, are you done?” asked Ben, and she suddenly realized she was still holding onto his thumb. 

“Oh, yeah,” she said. 

“Okay. I’m going to wash my hands, then.” Ben disappeared in the direction of the men’s room, and Mark hovered awkwardly above the table. Should she stand up? Offer him Ben’s seat? What was the protocol here?

Mark gestured in the direction Ben had gone. “I know it’s none of my business, but are you two…” 

“What?” Ann shook her head. What a weird thought. “No. God, no. Leslie is. He’s Leslie’s.” Which didn’t really explain why she’d been holding his hand in a restaurant, did it? “I was just taking out a splinter.” 

“He got a splinter eating a salad?” 

“No, he got a splinter in the lumber yard. We were—you know what, never mind.”

“Okay.” Mark pulled out a chair from the next table over, and sat, a little too close for comfort. “How is Leslie?”

Seriously? “Dude. Have you not been around?” 

He shook his head. “Not much, recently. Job. Traveling. You know. There aren’t that many construction projects in Pawnee itself.” 

She nodded. “Right. Um, Leslie’s great. She’s running for city council. And Ben—” she could see him coming back from the bathroom now, thank goodness—“is her campaign manager.”

Mark looked shocked. “Leslie’s running for office?”

“Yeah, she is,” said Ann, standing up. Her salad was only half finished, but—god, she just wanted to get out of this conversation. “Well, it was good to see you, Mark.” 

“Yeah, you too.” He stood up too, and shook her hand. She tried not to cringe. A handshake? Really? They’d dated for a year, and a handshake? He shook Ben’s hand too. 

They were halfway to the door when Mark called out, “Hey, Ann?” 

She grimaced. “Yeah?”

“Tell Leslie she has my vote.” 

Okay, she was overreacting. Mark was a good guy. Just…

\---

Five minutes later, when they were hiding a shaving brush behind a loose brick on the outside wall of Food N’Stuff, Ben put two and two together. 

“Wait. Was that _Mark_ Mark?” 

Ann nodded. 

He just shook his head. 

\---

A limited-edition “Knope 2012” bowling shirt went in the Pawnee Goddesses’ cabin, and a package of chocolate-covered bacon went in a freezer in the local Baskin-Robbins. 

Leslie sent thirty-eight text messages begging for progress reports. 

\---

“God, there’s nothing on the radio,” Ann complained, switching it off. Crazy Ira and the Douche were bad enough first thing in the morning; did the station really need to replay them in the afternoon too?

“You know we’re going to the radio station to hide this box of nails, right?” asked Ben. 

“All the more reason not to listen to them now,” she said. 

Ben pulled a CD out of the passenger door pocket and stared at the case.

“Ann.” 

“Hmm?”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me Ron had a music career?”

What? “Because he doesn’t.” 

“Then who’s Duke Silver?”

“Duke Silver is a local saxophone legend. He—” Wait a minute. She swerved into the nearest parking lot without braking, nearly rolling the car. “Sorry. Give me that CD. Duke Silver isn’t—” 

“This is a picture of Ron,” he said. “It’s clearly Ron.” 

Ben held up the case, and they both stared at the cover.

“And April did get him a saxophone,” Ben pointed out.

“Oh, my god,” said Ann, slowly. Her mind was definitely blown. “Ron is _Duke Silver_. How did April know?”

“So who’s Duke Silver? I feel like there’s something I’m not getting here.” 

“You haven’t been in Pawnee long enough. Does Leslie know? Oh, my god. I don’t think she knows. We have to call her.” Ann’s heart was racing a little, now. 

“She’s in a meeting with Ron.” 

“Right. No calling.” This was the weirdest day ever. “But I’m going to tell her when I see her. Oh, my god. Ron is _Duke Silver_.”

“Is being a Duke Silver fan like the tiny horse thing?”

Ann thought for a moment. “Don’t ever say that in front of any middle-aged woman from Pawnee.”

“Okay. Duly noted.” He looked at the case again. “I—I have to ask. How could you look at this cover and _not_ instantly realize that Ron and Duke Silver are the same person?”

Now that she looked at the cover again, she wondered that too. 

\---

They wound up back at City Hall, surreptitiously attaching a leather awl to the underside of Donna’s Benz with a magnet. Ann kept watch while Ben did the deed.

“Are you sure she doesn’t have a security camera on this thing?” Ben asked.

“No.” 

He fumbled with the magnet, dropped it, picked it up again.“Shoot.” 

“What do you think Donna will do if she catches us?” 

He didn’t answer, but he did stand up and dust his hands off. “There. Got it.”

Ann thought she spied a familiar floral shirt coming around the corner. “Run!” she screeched. 

They ran. 

\---

They hid some fishing lures under the tip jar at the Snakehole. 

\---

“Last thing.” 

“Last thing?” she said. “Where do we have to hide it?”

Ben glanced at the instructions, and sighed. “At my house. Well, why didn’t she just tell us to leave it there in the first place?” 

“That…is a good question.” They were headed in the wrong direction, so Ann turned into a parking lot and swung the car around. Her phone, which she’d left in the cup holder, started ringing. “Will you check that? It might be Leslie.” 

“Nope. It’s Tom.” 

Ann groaned, and thought she saw Ben raise an eyebrow. “What?” 

“Okay, I have to ask,” he said. “What’s the deal with you two?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Sometimes he’s fun. Sometimes I want to punch him.” 

“Which do you think more often, that he's fun or that you want to punch him?” 

“Punch him,” she said, without thinking about it. 

“Well, far be it from me to interfere with your relationships,” Ben said. “But if you want to punch him, isn’t that a sign you shouldn’t be dating?” 

“Maybe. Probably. Don’t answer the phone.”

“I didn’t.” 

“Wait until he leaves a voicemail and then listen to it, though. His voicemails are always so ridiculous. He’ll probably sing.” 

Ben glanced warily at the phone. It seemed like a good time to change the subject.

“So what’s the last present?” she asked. 

“A framed photo of Ron with Li’l Sebastian, at the Harvest Festival.” 

“That’s…kind of perfect,” she said.

“Yeah, I think he’ll like it.” 

\---

When they pulled into the driveway, Leslie was waiting for them. 

“Why didn’t you just tell us to hide this one before we left?” Ben asked, handing her the photo.

She grinned, tucked the photo into her purse, and hooked her arm around Ben’s waist. “I’m giving that one to Ron in person. I just wanted an excuse to see you guys.”

“You need an excuse to see us?” Ann asked.

“No, of course not. But it doesn’t hurt to have one.” 

Ann politely examined her fingernails while Leslie attached her face to Ben's for a while. 

“Oh, hey,” he said, breaking away. “Ann had something she needed to tell you.” 

Leslie perked up. “Did you guys have fun today?”

“We did, actually,” they said, in unison, and Leslie beamed. 

“Except for the splinter. I got a really bad splinter. But Ann took care of it.”

“Oh, and we ran into Mark Brendanawicz.” 

“Is that the thing you had to tell me?” 

“No.” Ann ran back to her car and pulled out the Duke Silver CD. “Leslie. You’re never going to believe what Ben figured out.” 

“Seriously,” Ben said, “I don’t get why _all of Pawnee_ hasn’t figured this out…”


	11. The Best Galentine's Day Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speculative pregnancy fic. Leslie goes into labor on Galentine's Day. This was technically canon-compliant at the time it was written; it obviously isn't anymore.

Outside the house, it was calm. Inside…well, Ann hoped it would be calm inside too. That was a stupid hope, though, and she knew it. It didn’t matter, of course. She’d helped Leslie through plenty of difficult experiences before, and this one wasn’t going to be any different, except—

“ _Push_!” yelled a voice from inside the house.

“Oh, no,” Ann said, to herself. Calm. Professional. She was a professional, experienced, well-trained nurse. Granted, none of her experience had been in the maternity ward, but... She burst in the front door. “Who’s telling Leslie to push? That’s not right.” 

“We’re not telling Leslie to push,” said April, rolling her eyes. “Leslie’s telling us to push.” 

Sure enough, Leslie was standing in the middle of the living room, directing traffic. “Ann! You’re here early. No, April, move the sofa that way. Andy, the coffee table goes against the wall. Ron, eggs and cheese are in the fridge. Remember you’re in charge of omelets for _everyone_ , not just yourself. Donna, the coffee—"

“Leslie, what’s going on?”

Leslie just gave her a momentary blank stare, then ran over and enveloped Ann in a hug, although hugging Leslie was a touch difficult at the moment. “Oh, Ann, you beautiful, forgetful whooping crane. It’s Galentine’s Day. Brunch. We do this every year.” 

“Yeah, I know we do this every year.” Ann held up her phone. “I also know that I got the following text from Ben: _Ann, come quickly, right away, Leslie’s water broke, what do I do first, help_. And it’s misspelled, which made me think—”

Leslie waved her off. Her hair was styled, Ann realized, and she’d put on makeup and jewelry and—good god, her “special occasion” sexy bedroom slippers, although Ann and Ben were likely the only ones who knew the slippers were supposed to be sexy. “Oh, well,” she said. “Ben’s a little nervous. Not terribly. Like, he had that initial moment of panic, but he’s fine now, totally functional—” 

“Deep, regular breaths,” said a familiar voice somewhere in the background. “In and out. Deep, regular breaths. There you go. Excellent work, buddy! I think you’re ready for the yoga ball now.” 

“See? Lamaze is helping,” said Leslie, cheerfully.

“Chris, will you just let me get up? I want to be with Leslie right now, not—”

“You know Lamaze isn’t for the father, right?” Ann asked. Also, why did Chris know Lamaze? She tried to put that one out of her mind.

Leslie shrugged. “Anyway, it’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not doing any of the heavy lifting, and—” She glanced down at Ann’s jeans and sweater, and wrinkled her nose. “Ann, I know it’s not a formal occasion, but you could’ve put in a _little_ more effort for Galentine’s Day.” 

“Here you go,” said Donna, striding in with a cup of coffee, which she handed to Ann. “You look like you need this.”

Dimly, Ann became aware that her jaw was hanging open. She closed it.

“Ann, will you go check on Ben and Chris?” Leslie said. She winced slightly, and grabbed the back of a chair. Was that a contraction? “Ooh. Anyway. Will you go check on them? Ben’s the only one who knows where the gifts are hidden.”

“Don’t you know where they are? And was that a contraction?”

“Of course I do, but I’m not physically capable of retrieving them.”

Ann glanced into the back room, where Chris had Ben leaning backwards over a giant therapy ball. “Why don’t you just tell me where they are, and I can get them? And was that a contraction?”

“No, Ann, no! I don’t want you seeing them ahead of time. Make Ben do it.”

She gave Leslie her sternest eyebrow, set down the coffee, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Stop avoiding the second question. _Was that a contraction_?” 

It took a few moments for her to answer. “No.”

“Leslie.”

“No.”

“ _Leslie_. No one will mind if we have to reschedule Galentine’s Day this year.”

Leslie made one of her most impatient faces. She was about ten seconds away from crazy eyes, Ann knew. “No,” she said. “It’s bad enough that we have all these men here on our day of ladies celebrating ladies. That’s as much concession as I’m willing to make.”

“Yeah, no,” Ann said. “We’re shutting this down. You’re having contractions. We’re not waiting for omelets.” 

“No.”

“Leslie.” 

“No.”

“ _Leslie_.” This time she used the nurse voice. “You can’t have a baby and Galentine’s Day at the same time. You can’t—” She decided to borrow a phrase from Ron. “You can’t half-ass having a baby.”

Leslie sighed. “My hospital bag is on the inside of the bedroom door.” She collapsed, ungracefully, in the nearest chair, looking defeated. “Damn it! I really wanted this to be the best Galentine’s Day ever.”

Andy snuck up to Ann and whispered in her ear, loudly enough for everyone, including Leslie, to hear. “I thought women were supposed to be happy when they had babies. That’s not sexist, right?” 

She decided to ignore Andy for now. “Chris, let Ben get up,” Ann ordered, and Ben, looking more relieved than Ann would have thought possible, swept into the room and hugged her before attaching himself to Leslie’s side. 

“Want me to get the bag?” April offered. 

“No,” said Ben, quickly. “I’ll get it.” Ann watched closely, but he made it up the stairs without tripping or falling into anything. 

Maybe he was okay. So they might get through this. 

Although apparently when Leslie said “hospital bag,” she meant “ten hospital bags.” Ron and Andy both had to help carry, and the three men returned looking like some sort of secret bonding ritual had just taken place, like the entire Parks department was going to deliver Leslie’s baby for her.

Well, Ann thought, as they finally loaded Leslie into the back seat of Ben’s new, ultra-safe, extra side-impact-airbag-equipped car—she was hardly surprised that Leslie would over-pack. And really, she would hardly be surprised if the entire Parks department _did_ deliver Leslie’s baby for her. Although letting Andy hold a newborn struck her as a genuinely terrible idea.

“We’ll lock up here,” said Ron, and Donna nodded.

“Best of luck! Which you will not need,” called Chris. “Childbirth is a natural, beautiful miracle, and you are going to have literally the best—”

Ben started backing out of the driveway before Chris could finish. 

“You seem calm, considering,” Ann told him. 

He sighed. “I was _fine_ until Chris showed up and started talking about placentas, and what various indigenous peoples around the world do with them.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have asked him to help move furniture,” Leslie muttered. “He just seemed so lonely.”

\---

Much to Ann’s surprise, the Knope-Wyatts remained perfectly calm through the check-in process, the initial examinations, and calling all the appropriate relatives, especially considering that Leslie’s labor seemed to be progressing ridiculously quickly. Which, Ann thought, of course it was; of course Leslie would have the world’s most efficient delivery. Still, Ben’s self-possession was impressive, and she made a remark about that to Leslie when Ben wandered off to find the men’s room. 

Leslie beamed. Or glowed, maybe. “He’s really excited about this. Maybe even more excited than I am. And we did all the classes, and read all the books, and—”

Ann had heard all the stories a dozen times already, but she kept holding Leslie’s hand, and started listening to them again. 

“I just wish,” Leslie kept saying, in between one huge contraction and sucking on ice chips and loudly wondering where the hell Ben had gone even though it had barely been three minutes, “that the baby could have waited one more day…”

“This is more important than Galentine’s Day. Everyone knows that.” 

“I know,” Leslie sighed. “But I don’t want to bring this child into a world where ladies aren’t celebrating ladies—”

“Who said that wasn’t happening today? Hello, darling.” Marlene swept into the room, and handed Ann something before she leant over the bed to kiss Leslie’s forehead. 

Ann glanced down at what she was holding. A paper plate with an omelet on it? Huh. 

“Ronald says your omelet is almost ready,” said Marlene, taking her plate back from Ann. 

Her brow wrinkled. “Okay?” She’d go see what that was about. She ought to leave the family alone, anyway. You didn’t have to be a maternity ward nurse to know that there was definitely such a thing as too many people in the delivery room. 

She ran into Ben in the hallway. He was carrying another omelet, and a couple of bags, and his iPad, and god knows what else. 

“Oh, hey, Ann. Your omelet is—”

“Yeah, I heard. Um, why are there omelets?” 

He looked bewildered. “Because it’s Galentine’s Day.” 

“And we’re in the hospital, where your wife is about to deliver a _baby_ —”

He fumbled with all the stuff in his arms, and handed her a gift bag. “I know, but I couldn’t let her miss it. That’s why Ron’s taking over for me. I’m going back to the room right now. And I’ll go ahead and give you this, but—” 

“Ben, what the hell—” 

But he was already half walking, half running down the hallway. “Tell April I’ll be ready with Face Time in about three minutes,” he called. “And come back as soon as you’re done with your omelet, will you?” 

“You’ll have plenty of nurses.” 

He spun around, nearly taking out a passing cafeteria worker collecting used breakfast trays, and gave her a puzzled look. “Not as a nurse. As a friend. Leslie says,” he continued, “and has been saying, and I can’t believe she didn’t say this to _you_ —she says she wants the first thing the baby sees to be the most beautiful sight in the world, which is your face.” 

Ann rolled her eyes. “She has said that to me, and I told her it sounded crazy. I thought I’d convinced her it was crazy. Delivery rooms are for family.” 

“I know.” His brow wrinkled. “But for god’s sake, Ann, you’re family. We both want you there. You’ll be there, right?” 

A warm glow spread through Ann’s chest, and she smiled. “I’ll be there. Just as soon as I finish my omelet.”

“Good.” He ran a hand through his hair, which stood completely on end. “Good lord. We’re having a _baby_.”

\---

“God, you’re always late,” groaned April, when Ann entered the waiting room. “Don’t you know your way around? You _work_ here.” But she was smiling, and checking Tom’s iPad, which she had propped up on one of the waiting room tables. 

Ron handed her an omelet and a plastic fork. “Are there mushrooms in this?” she asked. Maybe it was a dumb thing to think about right now, but she really wanted mushrooms.

“There are not. Cheese and bacon only. Vegetables are pointless.”

She glanced around the waiting room. Donna was perched on the arm of a chair, showing Leslie’s mail lady a pair of leopard-print baby booties. Tom and Andy stood in the corner by a set of outlets, gleefully examining a compact, space-age toaster that Tom must have just purchased from the SkyMall catalog. Ron was positioned by the other set of outlets, manning two electric skillets—one omelets, one breakfast sausage—while Chris stood next to him, cutting pineapple into decorative shapes. Jerry, Gayle, and Millicent hovered in the back, holding baby gifts, clearly unsure whether or not they were supposed to be there. All the ladies had been given beautifully decorated, personalized gift bags.

Definitely the best Galentine’s Day ever. Assuming one of the more uptight nurses didn’t come by and shut down the omelet bar. Well, whatever. Between Ron and April, she was sure this group could handle anything. 

“Shut up, shut up,” yelled April to the room at large, gesturing wildly with one hand while she swiped at the iPad with the other. “Leslie’s here.” 

They all clustered around the screen.


	12. An Uptight, Rigid Sense of Fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the one I have never been able to explain. Thanks to some wonderful Photoshop work by craponaspatula, it is virtually guaranteed to give you nightmares. For whatever reason, the fandom didn't kick us out for this.

“What? No. Ben, no, that isn’t possible.” 

“I assure you,” he said, sounding rueful even through the terrible cell phone reception, “it’s not only possible, it’s already happened. It’s—damn it. I just touched–damn it.” 

Her heart started sinking. “This is the worst thing that could happen.” 

“It’s not. It’s just incredibly annoying.”

“No, it is. It is the worst thing!” What should she do? She should go over there. She should go over there and take care of Ben as best she could, and on the way she would call Ann, beautiful nurse Ann. Ann would know what to do. She jammed her feet into her Converse sneakers, grabbed her purse, and ran out the door without bothering to tie her shoes. 

“Leslie, I think you might be overreacting.” 

Maybe. Maybe she was overreacting. She took a deep, calming breath and locked her front door. “Okay. I’m okay. I’m not overreacting.”

“I only called to tell you I was going to be late for breakfast.” He sighed. “And to see if you had any ideas.” 

She thought of all the things she liked about Ben, physically: his terrible face, his sexy elf king body, his cute butt, his—his great—

She wasn’t overreacting. “I’m coming over right away!” she yelled into the receiver. Then she hung up on him and hit her speed dial. “Ann? This is Leslie, Leslie Knope from the Committee to Elect Leslie Knope—”

\---

Twenty minutes later, a small party was assembled at campaign headquarters, staring at the problem. The giant, sticky, horrible problem, which smelled really terrible and looked worse, and…ugh, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. 

“Okay,” said Ann. “First of all, I want to know what happened. Second of all, I want to reiterate that my being a nurse is _completely irrelevant_ to this situation.”

Ben sighed. “What happened is that Natalie slept over last night, and she and April got into some kind of fight—”

“It wasn’t a fight,” April interrupted, sounding bored. “It was a competition.” 

“Okay, fine. April and Natalie waited until I fell asleep, then got into a _competition_ to see who could stick the most wads of gum into my hair before I woke up.”

“It was a dumb competition,” April said. “You never woke up.”

Where _was_ Natalie? Gone already, Leslie supposed. She thought she might cry. She loved Ben’s hair, and now…now it was covered in gobs of watermelon Bubble Yum, cinnamon Extra, spearmint Trident, and Juicyfruit. Horrible, horrible Juicyfruit. 

“Ann, please,” she begged. “Please. You’re the most beautiful nurse in the world. There must be something you can do.” 

Ann shook her head. “Leslie, I told you. Chewing gum in hair is not a medical problem.” 

Leslie trusted Ann, of course—since Ann was not only the most beautiful, but also the most wonderful nurse in the world—but surely Ann was wrong about this. “What about the paper airplanes?”

“I did those,” said Andy, proudly. “And the Christmas tree ornament.”

Ann crossed her arms over her chest. “Still not a medical problem.” 

“Well, I googled it,” Ben said, “and the consensus seems to be that the best way to get gum out of hair is peanut butter.” 

“Great!” Leslie chirped. “Where’s your peanut butter?”

“Oh,” said Andy, suddenly. “Um…Champion and I may have eaten it.”

Ben stared at him. “I _just_ bought a huge jar. You ate _all of it_?” 

Andy stared at his feet. “Well, we ran out of dog food, and we were hungry, so...”

They made another phone call.

\---

Ten minutes later, Chris was there with a jar of all-natural peanut butter, swearing he had literally never run faster in his life. 

“Ben Wyatt,” he said, gazing at the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad problem. “This is a tragedy.”

Ben was starting to look annoyed. “It’s just _gum_. May I please have the peanut butter, Chris?”

As it turned out, though, all-natural, salt-free, soy-free, gluten-free, preservative-free peanut butter was no match for the handiwork of the Ludgate sisters. All-natural peanut butter also made the whole thing smell worse. Leslie suspected the peanut butter tasted terrible, as well; the label clearly said it contained no added sugar. 

“I’m afraid,” Chris said, and he did look devastated, “that we’re going to have to try alternative nut butters. Or perhaps we should just cut it out, using scissors.” 

“Fine,” said Ben. “Just somebody, please, get this stuff off of me. Shave my head if you have to. The smell is making me nauseous, and it’s starting to hurt.” 

_Shave his head_?

Leslie burst into tears. 

\---

She felt a little better now. Tom and Donna had stopped at JJ’s on their way over, and brought her a waffle, and that did what April’s vodka and Chris’s vitamin D and St. John’s wort capsules couldn’t. 

“Look, Leslie, think of this as an opportunity!” Tom said.

“An opportunity for what?” she sniffled. 

Donna raised her eyebrows. “Drastic change in hairstyle? You can pretend you got yourself a new man.”

Leslie burst into tears again. “But I don’t _want_ a new man,” she sobbed. “I want the one I already _have_ , with the hair I like.” And no Christmas tree ornaments attached to his head. 

Andy giggled, April gagged, Chris said something that Leslie totally ignored, Donna rolled her eyes, Ann smiled consolingly, and Ben reached over and squeezed her hand. 

“Leslie,” he said, “it’ll grow back. You know it’ll grow back, right? It won’t even take that long.”

Ann handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose. “I know.” 

“So let’s go.”

Tom snapped his fingers. “Hold up. I just had an awesome idea. April, come with me. Need your skills.”

April rolled her eyes, but she followed. 

"And I," said Chris, "am going to run to the Grain 'n' Simple in Snerling. They carry a much wider variety of nut butters than one can find in Pawnee. Just to be on the safe side."

\---

Twenty minutes later, they were clustered around April’s laptop, examining…well, Leslie appreciated that April had gone to the trouble, but seriously, how was this supposed to help?

“So what we have here,” Tom announced, “is a slideshow presentation of what Ben would look like with different haircuts. Now—” He nodded at April, who hit the arrow key. 

“Good lord,” said Ben. 

Tom ignored the interruption. “Now, obviously, we’re gonna start with the best possible look.”

April’s eyeballs were practically falling out of her head at this point, and so were Ann’s. 

Leslie recognized the picture too. “Tom,” she said, slowly, “did you Photoshop Ben’s face onto a picture of yourself?”

“Best possible haircut,” he said, confidently. “Approved by _GQ_ and Ryan Gosling.”

Andy giggled. “You kind of look like Adam Sandler,” he said. 

“Shut up,” said April, swatting at him. “I did all of these in twenty minutes, okay?”

Ann snorted. “You and Ryan Gosling do not have the same haircut.” 

“That’s just because RGos hasn’t seen mine yet. If he had, he would get it.”

Ben squinted. "Okay, one, this is weird. Two, why is that cup so tiny?"

April, shaking her head, hit the arrow key again, and again, Andy giggled.

“That one I like,” said Donna at once. 

“Is that—who is that?” asked Ann. "Is that Eminem?"

Tom groaned. “Ann! That’s Ben. Although I am impressed that you know who Eminem is.”

“I know it’s Ben’s face. Whose body is it on?”

“David Beckham.” 

“The soccer player?”

“No, the underwear model." Ann didn't react. "You know, _David Beckham_. The one who’s married to Posh Spice.”

Ann nodded. “Yeah, he’s a soccer player,” she insisted. 

“Whatever! No one cares about that. His hair is shorter. That’s the point.”

Donna leaned over and felt up and down Ben’s arms. “Nope,” she said, with a crisp, single shake of her head. “Ben’s not gonna look like that. Too wimpy.” 

Tom shook his head too, which April took as a sign to move to the next slide. 

“All the ladies love Bieber,” he said.

Leslie stomped her foot. “ _I_ don’t. _I_ don’t love Bieber.”

“Plus,” said Ben, who was starting to look rather embarrassed, “his hair is _longer_ than mine…”

April skipped over the next couple of images, and stopped on _what the hell was that_.

“What about this dude from a boy band, then?” she asked.

“No!” Leslie shrieked. Her vision was starting to go dark around the edges.

April hit the arrow key again.

“Yes to that one too,” Donna proclaimed. 

“No Robert Pattinson hair!” God, her pulse was loud. Was it always this loud? She might need to start shouting, just so she could hear herself. 

Ann stepped over and guided Leslie onto the couch. “Deep breaths. It’s going to be okay.” 

April flipped to the next slide, and Leslie's pulse quieted.

Hmm. That one wasn’t too bad. Kind of sexy, even. 

“You know, that one I like—”

“Nope,” said Ben, firmly, and he slapped the laptop screen shut. To do that, he had to step over Andy, who was curled into fetal position on the floor, sobbing with laughter. 

Tom and Ann resumed their Ryan Gosling argument, while Donna absconded with the laptop—to go back to the David Beckham picture, Leslie supposed. She was going to try not to think about that. 

Ben pulled her into his bedroom, away from the chaos, and closed the door behind them. Once her eyes were off the screen, and those images, the terrible situation came back into focus. 

“I know,” she said, instantly. She sat down on the edge of his bed, and he joined her. “I know I’m overreacting. I just…really like your hair.” 

Ben smiled, then grimaced. “Ow. Who knew gum could pull so hard at your scalp?” 

“If you have to do this, then you have to do this.” She glanced involuntarily to Ben’s desk, at the photo of his brother and newborn niece, the one that had shocked her to her core the first time she’d seen it because they looked so much alike, but _how could Ben’s younger brother have male pattern baldness_? A shudder ran down her spine.

“I think I do. Be brave.” He followed her gaze, but didn’t say anything else.

“I hope it doesn’t hurt the campaign,” she muttered. Or her sex life. If either of those things happened, she’d _kill_ April and Natalie. And make it look like they’d killed each other. That didn’t seem like it would be such a hard thing to do. 

“Seriously?” He raised an eyebrow. 

“Nearly all successful politicians in the post-Kennedy era have had hair, Ben. A lot of them have had _great_ hair.”

He batted at one of her curls, a smile playing around one corner of his mouth. “Good thing you’re the politician, then.” 

She held her breath—god the peanut butter-watermelon-cinnamon-spearmint-Juicyfruit smell was overwhelmingly awful—and kissed him. Quickly, since she didn’t want to breathe through her nose at this distance. 

He stood up. “You’ll still love me if I come back with a terrible haircut, right?” 

“Of course.” 

She hoped.

\---

Leslie stayed at the house while Tom took Ben to the barber, taking the opportunity to go through some campaign binders, though not much was sticking. _Sticking_. Crap, that word made her depressed right now. April and Andy prepared lunch for everyone—dinosaur-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, which were surprisingly good, and didn’t kill anybody (at least, not right away). 

Chris returned with almond butter, cashew butter, and sunflower seed butter, and when he realized Ben and Tom were already gone, he glumly accepted a dinosaur-shaped cashew butter-and-jelly sandwich from Andy.

The front door flew open, banging into the wall with such force that Champion whimpered and tried to hide under the coffee table. 

“Boo-yah,” said Tom, entering with his usual swagger. Oh, great, he was using the finger guns this time. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present—the Vin Diesel of Pawnee.” 

She felt weak. 

\---

The next thing Leslie knew, she was flat on her back on the sofa, and Ann—beautiful Angora rabbit Ann (she knew it was Ann, she could just tell, even with her eyes closed)—was crouched over her, holding a cold compress to her forehead. Leslie opened her eyes a fraction of an inch. She didn’t want to see anything other than Ann right now. Ann had great hair. Really great hair—shiny and dark and thick, like hair was supposed to be. Her bangs looked especially nice today, Leslie thought. Even nicer than usual. 

“Leslie,” she heard Andy say, from a distance, “I’ve got this beard I’ve been working on? I could shave it off and we could, like, glue that to Ben’s head.” 

Andy wasn’t the only one talking.

“I can recommend some _excellent_ herbal supplements for follicle stimulation—” 

“You look like a skinny No. 2 pencil with an eraser on top.” 

“Gross. Your head is a really weird shape.” 

“And whose fault is it that we can _see_ the shape of my head, again?”

“Quiet, everyone,” came Ann’s voice, stern and nurse-like. “She’s coming to.”

“Leslie?” A blurry plaid sleeve crept into the edge of her vision.

She took a deep breath, and opened her eyes the rest of the way. “Hi, honey.” 

“Hi.” 

She rubbed the top of his head. 

“It’ll grow back,” he said. 

“I know.” She rubbed it again, and tried to smile. 

\---

At her campaign event the next morning, Ron walked straight past them without so much as a sideways glance—just his usual nod and grunt. 

“See?” Ben said. “It’s not _that_ obvious.” 

She elbowed him in the ribs, just as Jerry hurried up.

“Leslie, thank goodness you’re here, I have—” His gaze landed on Ben’s head. “Oh, my goodness,” Jerry moaned, and he dropped his entire stack of paperwork in a muddy puddle. “What happened?”

They explained quickly, while they tried to rescue the documents. 

“Well, why didn’t you call me before you shaved it off?” Jerry asked. “You know I have three daughters, and the playground teasing in this town is just awful. I’ve removed my fair share of bubble gum from hair.”

“Peanut butter didn’t work. We tried.” 

Jerry blinked. “Did you try Crisco?” he asked. “Or hair silicone drops? Or ice water, sometimes soaking it in ice water helps. Let’s see, what else have I used successfully? Adhesive remover, mayonnaise, eucalyptus oil, toothpaste, WD-40…”

“You know what, Jerry?” she said, hastily. Was he going to talk all day? Shut up, Jerry. “It’s fine. It’ll grow back.” 

\---

It did. Much sooner than she’d expected. Which was good, because April hadn’t given up on her Photoshop work, and she’d taken to printing out assorted images of Ben with other people's hair and hiding them all over the house. Eventually, though, they got used to opening up folders or peeling back the blankets and finding Ben’s face stuck to Yanni or Leonard Nimoy or Carrot Top or that guy who used to paint trees on PBS. Now that Ben had his own, awesome hair back, they were kind of funny. 

  


 

“I mean, in all fairness,” Ben said, holding up an image of himself with a high-and-tight and a flourishing mustache that he’d just found in his sock drawer, “Ron’s hair isn’t bad. I could pull this off." 

“Eh.” Leslie wrinkled her nose, and pulled another picture out of her padfolio. “Better Ron than—who is this, Billy Ray Cyrus? How is April even old enough to know about him?”

“She watches those ‘90s countdowns on VH1.” He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled Leslie down with him, and started kissing her. 

Lately, every time they made out, Leslie found her fingers running across Ben’s scalp, back and forth, as though they were determined to feel every last regrown strand. 

God, he had a great head of hair. 

\---

There was one image she never told Ben about. She kept it folded and tucked away in her bathroom, in a box of tampons, figuring that was the last place in her house he’d accidentally look. 

It just...worked so perfectly with her Oval Office fantasies. 

\---


End file.
